Absent From Boston Bomb Investigation and Relief: U.S. Military

Sgt. Ezequiel Valencia with the 747 Military Police Company, Massachusetts Army National Guard, watches as the Boston Marathon begins, April 15, 2013. Photo: U.S. Army

The Pentagon’s bomb squad formally predicted the threat last year: improvised explosive devices of the sort seen in Iraq and Afghanistan would come to American cities. “In the event of an IED-related domestic incident,” the squad, known as JIEDDO, further anticipated in its five-year strategic plan, “the lead federal agency will require DoD [Department of Defense] support.”

As it turns out, not really. Assuming investigators are correct that the Boston Marathon bombs were jury-rigged together, the Marathon attack on Monday represents the first major domestic homemade bomb attack of the post-9/11 era. But first responders, cops and federal law enforcement didn’t call on any significant Defense Department aid. It’s an encouraging sign amidst a depressing week.

Air Force Lt. Col. Tom Crosson, a Pentagon spokesman, provides the tally of U.S. military support for the aftermath of the bombing. The one unambiguous Defense Department element? A team of three Navy explosive-ordnance disposal technicians who drove from Naval Station Newport to assist on Monday night with clearing suspicious packages. Turned out the packages weren’t bombs, so the Navy team wasn’t needed the next day.

Approximately 1000 Massachusetts National Guardsmen were on hand in Boston, including two teams designed to detect unconventional weapons, called Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams. Most of them were deployed before the bombs went off, to secure the Marathon site. But at no point were the Guardsmen federalized: they were always under the control of Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts. According to Crosson, as of this morning, about 850 Guardsmen remain on-hand in Boston.

Nor is there much for JIEDDO to do. It’s not an operational military element. Until there’s a decision to deploy U.S. Northern Command in support of federal law enforcement, JIEDDO can do little more than make its expertise about the different varieties of homemade bombs available to the FBI. If the feds come asking.

The lack of a U.S. military presence in Boston isn’t by any means an indication of failure. It means that civilian law enforcement — which managed to clear thousands of people out of Copley Square rapidly and safely, to preserve a crime scene — believed it had matters under control. Boston’s public health system is earning plaudits for the quality and rapidity of care it provided the roughly 180 people injured. The city didn’t suffer massive infrastructure damage from the bombs, and the military hasn’t needed to secure mass-transit or other Boston systems.

But maybe 12 years of warfare has created an assumption that big security problems are inherently a military specialty. So far, the Boston Marathon response has demonstrated that even when some of the most terrifying battlefield weapons come home, civilian authorities can handle it.